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Peter rabbit pops in.

Hello again.

Sometimes you just can’t get to your crochet can you? Life gets in the way and your lovely colourful basket of woolly creativeness sits untouched in a corner.

It’s been like that for me lately but for the happiest of reasons as we prepared for our baby granddaughter’s Christening. She is a very special little girl as she was only just over 3lb when born, giving everyone a very worrying time, so tiny and perfect. Thankfully she is growing and thriving now such a gorgeous baby and we are so proud of her mummy and daddy too.

One of her tiny first babygrows is on display here, can you believe the size of it?

Our B&B made the perfect venue for such a joyful family event and of course we home catered and I made the Christening cake too. Phew!

Celebrations always have to involve cake don’t they? Nowadays that is likely to be some kind of flavoured sponge or madeira recipe rather than a traditional rich fruit cake with marzipan and icing so we compromised and had both. Marzipan, mmm! You either love it or hate it. Actually I’m probably addicted to it and can’t keep it in the house.

Here’s the bunting going up. I bet you’ve never seen the teeny tiny wool shop looking like this either.

I love to bake but I’m not really a cake decorator so this was all a bit of a challenge. My mum decorated cakes back in the day and took classes to learn her craft. Several other talented members of the family produce magnificent creations too so the pressure was definitely on. I have childhood memories of ‘helping’ as mum made complicated royal icing run outs and lattices and iced each cake with several wafer thin coats so that they could harden sufficiently to support the plaster pillars between the tiers. ‘Can I have that little end of marzipan? Can I lick out the icing nozzles when you are finished?’ None of your roly out smooth fondant to cheat with in those days, real skill was required. These are some of her truly magnificent cakes.

I still have a lot of mum’s baking tins. It makes me feel very connected to be using them now to bake for the family celebrations she would never know. So I started with the fruit cake.

I chose a Peter Rabbit theme and had a good look on You Tube before starting the scariest job of making Peter himself.

Actually not quite the scariest job as I think writing with a piping bag was the bit I was most dreading!

Then to the fun of making the tiny vegetables for his garden and the fencing and flowers around the sides of the cake, the experimenting part.

It might not have been the most professional job but everyone loved it on the day.

What a happy day we had too, worth every second of preparation.

Next weekend we return to normal with a crochet retreat here at the B&B. Whatever is getting in the way of your crochet time then you can leave it all behind on a crochet retreat and simply enjoy some space and time to enjoy your woolly projects. I’m so looking forward to it. Hope to see you soon.

2 thoughts on “Peter rabbit pops in.”

What a wonderful celebration for a special little girl!
You did an amazing job with the cake, a real labour of love, and I just love Peter Rabbit.
All over too soon and back to normality. Your Escape to the Crochet retreats are just that – a real retreat and a real treat. ?

Meet Gillian

Hello my name is Gillian and thank you for visiting me at Escape to the Crochet here in beautiful Northumberland.

David and I run our cosy little B&B here on our smallholding and especially love to welcome guests to our crochet day retreats and short breaks where it’s all about colourful crochet, homemade cakes and good home cooking.

Crochet gives me an escape that I love and I hope to share the joy with you, along with some of my other favourite escapes.